The  New York Times  described it as “one small step for preservation and one giant leap of logic”. California’s historical commission has voted to protect two small urine collection devices, four space-sickness bags and dozens of other pieces of detritus, all currently residing nearly a quarter of a million miles from the state, in the moon.

A report in an Australian state legislature has highlighted that people from aboriginal communities languish in prison because of a dearth of interpreters.


Reacting to the report, the opposition party in the South Australian government wants the state government to resolve the problems arising from a lack of competent and reliable aboriginal interpreters at Port Augusta Court, which services aboriginal in the state.

A New Zealand tour operator is in trouble. Instead of employing Maori, the tour company Discovery Heritage Group based in the northern New Zealand city of Tauranga, paid backpackers visiting from France and Israel to dress up in feathered robes, draw tattoos in pen on their faces and go aboard cruise ships when they pulled into the port city of Tauranga.

Over the last month or so, the media has portrayed Google as friendless in China. Embroiled in a censorship row with China, the search engine giant has threatened to leave the country. But now it seems that Google does have a loving sister in China.

   


Just a few days after it threatened to leave, a site popped up: Goojje.


The site is a pun. Its last part, jje, sounds like jie jie or sister in Mandarin Chinese. Google’s last syllables sound like “ge ge” or brother in Chinese.

A team of women in Myanmar have risked their lives to document the heroin-filled world they inhabit. The report exposes the spreading opium fields in the north-eastern corner of the military-ruled country. Myanmar’s military regime gives the impression that poppy cultivation continues in areas only under the control of ethnic rebel groups.

Winter reminds me of the innumerable lessons grandpa would give us cousins on the crops growing in our fields in Ambala. We would go there each year, but more than the lessons we were keen on eating delicacies grandma cooked for us. Bajra would intrigue me because it is a sturdy crop; it can grow in sandy soil, high temperatures, and can make do with little water.

If there is a neem or jamun tree in your backyard, check it regularly and note down when they flower and fruit. You may soon realise you are collecting data for scientific research.


The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a research body in Bengaluru, plans to rope in people for creating an online database on the lifecycle of various plant species across the country and on the influence of climate change on them.

There  is talk of a new generation of filmmakers in Mumbai sensitive to the realities of an India that popular cinema has left untouched till now. Health conditions have recently found their way into film scripts. Diseases like Asperger syndrome, dyslexia and anterograde amnesia have featured in popular films— My Name is Khan, Taare Zameen Par and Ghajini, to name a few.

Gimmick or otherwise, austerity is once again in fashion. People’s travels could be for a purpose or for pleasure, not so for ministers and government officials. They travel for specific purposes. The publicly stated purpose could be, and usually is, very different from their private intent. Many such travels are undertaken ostensibly for learning purposes. The Congress wants its ministers to ‘learn’ to travel cattle class.